Hello and welcome to the third and final part of our three-part series on case endings.
In case you’ve missed the first two parts, we’ll go ahead and give you a quick review now.
(You can also visit our YouTube channel here and our blog here to catch up on what you’ve missed so far.)
In Arabic, case endings are short vowel marks (or الحَرَكات /alHarakaat/ in Arabic) that are placed above and below the last letter of a word. These let the reader know what the grammatical function of the word is. In other words, they help the reader determine if the word is a subject, object, or verb of a sentence.
Each case marker corresponds to one of the different grammatical cases. These cases are:
المَرْفوع
/almarfooʻ/
nominative
المَنْصوب
/almanSoob/
accusative
المَجْرور
/almajroor/
genitive
We’ll end our series today with the genitive case.
The Genitive Case
The genitive case in Arabic is marked by a كَسرَة/kasrah/ ( ِ ) which is placed below the word. Furthermore, this case is used to indicate words that come after a preposition, an adverb, and the second word in an /ʼidhaafah/ (إِضافَة).
Unlike the nominative and accusative, however, there are three cases in which the genitive is used:
Case 1: The noun that precedes the preposition takes the genitive, as in:
ذَهَبَ سامي إِلى المَدْرَسَةِ
/THahaba saamee ʼilaa ilmadrasati/
Sami went to school.
Here you will note that the word Arabic المَدْرَسَةِ/ilmadrasati / is always marked by a /kasrah/ at the end and it precedes the preposition.
Here is another example:
إِلى اليَمينِ
/’ilaa ilyameeni/
to the right
Case 2: The noun that precedes adverbs, as in:
تَحْتَ الشَّمْسِ
/taHta ishamsi/
under the sun
Case 3: The second noun of إِضافَة/ʼidhaafah/, as in:
كِتابُ العَرَبِيَّةِ
/kitaabu ilʻarabiyyati/
Arabic book
مُديرُ المَكْتَبِ
/mudeeru ilmaktabi/
Office manager
This concludes our series on the case endings of Arabic grammar. However, please keep coming back for more on all things Arabic.
And if you enjoy learning Arabic with Kaleela, then be sure to visit our website and download the Kaleela Arabic language learning app. Not only will you learn more about the basics of Arabic like grammar and pronunciation, but you’ll also learn more vocabulary and dialects that will have you speaking like a native speaker in no time at all. To find out more, go to kaleela.com and start learning Arabic the right way today!
